Youth Untapped Cell Phone Segment

Dr. Martin Cooper the inventor of the cellular phone once said, " what better thing can you do in your life than try to change the world? (1)" That is exactly what he did when in 1973 he created the first working prototype of a cellular telephone (2). It was not until 1983 however that the first cell phone became commercially available. Ironically, when cellular phones were first released their primary target market was business people. Then, as the phones became more readily available, the target market began to slowly shift towards the entire adult population. This shift was initially responsible for the huge increase in cell phone utilization. The first four years of its release saw the market of cell phone customers grow to one million people. By 1998, this number had exploded to 69 million. A mere eighteen years later, it is a startling fact that 230 million cell phone subscribers exist around the world. These numbers prove that cellular phone use has increased over the past few decades and with the media attention they received throughout the recent disasters as a strong, reliable communications tool, we can assume more increases in future cell phone use patterns among the whole population as a trend.

Another trend that has developed in the last couple of years is the increased use of cell phones among teens. This increase however was not expected or planned by the cell phone marketers. It happened unexpect

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are: Youth cell phone use has surged in the past couple of years to reach 25% (3). This 25% is a huge increase, but there is still a 75% possible increase potential. 24% of females and 15% of males own a wireless phone according to a study done by Teenage Research Unlimited (4). The same study shows that in the next year 18% of females and 13% of males will ask their parents to buy them a cell phone. This means targeting the youth, especially the male population, could result in an even larger increase. When beeper marketing campaigns came out the use of beepers skyrocketed in less than five years, which means campaigns promoting cell phone use should have similar results (3). Teens polled in urban and suburban areas stated that having a cell phone is cool. Thus creating a campaign that portrays this could increase use and in turn sales even more (5). According to Steve Friedman, parents purchase cell phones for their children to have safety. So targeting youth by creating campaigns that show phones will provide safety would help this already increasing trend (6). Steve Friedman also states that Parents buy phones for their college kids because they have free long distance. Providing this option would al
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1264
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)